Articles

Mobile museum tours – apps, and indoor positioning

by Geoff Stead

Museums are the perfect place for a mobile tour guides, but what are the current technology trends that can make these simpler to create? Discover what happened when we used Bluetooth LE to build a virtual museum tour…

GPS has transformed the way we navigate around a city, but what happens when you go indoors, where GPS can’t reach? There are several competing technologies your app could use to know where it is in a building. Some are truly location aware, while others try to understand what you are looking at. The top three methods are:

1) Signal triangulation: setting up a series of broadcasts that your phone interprets to figure out where you are. (this most often uses wifi, but there are other alternatives too).

You need to teach your app about each new building / wifi point / broadcast signal, so this approach struggles to scale up.

2) Item identification (active): In this scenario your phone has no idea where you are, but it knows what you are looking at. Typical technologies might be QR-Codes, RFID tags, Augmented Reality triggers, image recognition. In all of these cases the user needs to interact with the item. Sometimes with a dedicated app, or in the case of QR Codes, maybe only a web page is required.

This is much easier to set up, as all triggers are physical things the user points their phone at.

3) Zone identification (passive):This is what we were doing with the Bluetooth LE tags. Sending out small, localised signals that tell you which “zone” you are in. Bluetooth LE is the same technology as Apple’s recently announced iBeacons.

This is similarly easy to set up, as you just need to place beacons in each zone. The user does NOT need to know where they are, as long as their signal can reach their phones.

The advantage of passive zone identification is that you do not need to actively point at / tap / identify the object with your device – instead you get an automatic listing of items that are nearest to you.

Another related concept is Geofencing, or marking out specific regions that your app can understand, regardless of which way it gets its positional data – though this usually relies on outdoor technologies (like GPS) to know where you are

For our QMuseum Tour app we used Qualcomm’s Gimbal Proximity beacons as a passive zone identifier, which we positioned around the museum marking out our different zones. Some we hid behind the walls, and others on actual exhibits. This is easier than it sounds, since because Bluetooth LE is very low power, we could use tiny beacons (powered by a watch battery) where space was critical, and larger ones (with AA batteries, or mains power) where space allowed.

Each zone contained several exhibits, so we used Gimbal Proximity to identify which zone you were in, and then the app would highlight all the items in that zone. Originally we wanted a perfect match for each exhibit, but we found that getting that micro-level of accuracy was difficult, and in addition, the close proximity of the items in the museum meant that it was not always the closest item that our users were looking at! To manage this, we added the concept of “forgiveness” to the positioning algorithm.

Bluetooth has some features that make it challenging for indoor positioning. Signals pass through walls, but can be distorted by bodies standing in the way. Signals reach a long way, which can make it hard distinguish between 2 items close together. The strongest signal is not always your nearest beacon. Our concept of “Forgiveness” worked well here, because we showed the user all of the “close by” items in the museum, without assuming the exact item being viewed. This approximate positioning ended up being the most intuitive way to manage an interface to a passive positioning app. The app itself was developed using the free to download Gimbal Proximity SDK. This exists for both iOS and Android.

We’ve generated quite a lot of interest from other museums for our app, and are considering releasing it to the general public to have a remote view of our museum in San Diego.

Yes I’d be interested in learning more about the app, are you planning to open source it?

geoffstead

Hi James – Some of the libraries that Gimbal uses are open source, but as far as I am aware Gimbal itself isn’t. It is free for developers to download and code with, though. It is called “Gimbal Positioning” and is part of the Gimbal API framework. https://www.gimbal.com

The version we showed here is iOS only, because the iOS code supported iBeacons earlier than Android, but we are almost finished with an Android one as well.

http://www.jamessenior.com James Senior

Thanks Geoff, do you have a direct link to the docs for Gimbal Positioning? I’ve searched through the developer documentation and can’t find any references. Many thanks.

James

geoffstead

HI James – did you sign up as a developer? They should all be here: https://manager.gimbal.com/sdk_downloads (the proximity stuff is hiding at the bottom of the page. It is an extra component of Gimbal)

If you are in the US, I think they will even send you some free beacons to play around with. You can tag your dog, and track them

http://www.jamessenior.com James Senior

Yes I’d be interested in learning more about the app, are you planning to open source it?

geoffstead

Hi James – all the underpinning code that manages the positioning logic is already open source. It is called “Gimbal Positioning” and is part of the Gimbal open source framework. https://www.gimbal.com

The version we showed here is iOS only, because the iOS code supported iBeacons earlier than Android, but we are almost finished with an Android one as well.

http://www.jamessenior.com James Senior

Thanks Geoff, do you have a direct link to the docs for Gimbal Positioning? I’ve searched through the developer documentation and can’t find any references. Many thanks.

James

geoffstead

HI James – did you sign up as a developer? They should all be here: https://manager.gimbal.com/sdk_downloads (the proximity stuff is hiding at the bottom of the page. It is an extra component of Gimbal)

If you are in the US, I think they will even send you some free beacons to play around with. Enough to tag your dog, cat, and suitcase, and track them

yes, I am also like to get those stuff if available. In fact, we use nexus 7 to do some investigation with BLE.

ye echo

yes, I am also like to get those stuff if available. In fact, we use nexus 7 to do some investigation with BLE.

Art Processors

The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania, Australia has been using Bluetooth LE since October 2013 providing accurate indoor positioning for mobile clients. It has also been installed at The NSW State Library since February 2013 supporting both iOS and Android devices running the Curio app. Both these use the EnsoLocate system.

Art Processors

The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania, Australia has been using Bluetooth LE since October 2013 providing accurate indoor positioning for mobile clients. It bass also been installed at The NSW State Library since February 2013 supporting both iOS and Android devices running the Curio app. Both these use the EnsoLocate system.

24pfilms

Hello Geoff, I am very interested in this for exterior usage with historical monument. Could I ask you some questions offline. 24pfilms at gmail dot com

24pfilms

Hello Geoff, I am very interested in this for exterior usage with historical monument. Could I ask you some questions offline. 24pfilms at gmail dot com

Great post Geoff. Very intuitive. Love the idea about ‘forgiveness’. I thinks museums are a natural fit for iBeacon technology. There is always so much more information a visitor can get about his/her artefact of interest, just by standing in front of it! Museums and beacons are a perfect match. I recently wrote an article about the various ways in which beacons can be used to enhance visitors’ experience: http://linkd.in/1Dpswzq

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